[clarke68]

My wife bought me an iPod 5G for our anniversary a few months ago, and frankly I've been blown away by the sound quality. The earbuds are the weak link in the chain, for sure, but I find the thing perfectly enjoyable even with a pair of unamped HD-580s.

Fact is, a lot of people on the hardware side are very concerned about sound quality, in particular chip manufacturers like TI (Burr-Brown) and Analog Devices. Yes, they're concerned about pricing as well, but good things happen when these two work hand-in-hand. I have no scientific evidence to prove it, but I firmly believe that you can put together a $1000 system today that will keep up with a $10,000 system from 20 years ago.

The biggest enemy of sound quality is the recording industry. All of the truly well-recorded albums I own make any system sound better, even a boom box or my car, but the industry is caught up in this misguided "squash the dynamics to make it louder" race, which renders things like 24/96 moot. No amount of resolution can fix a bad master.

 

[Mr.PD]

Quote:

Originally Posted by elrod-tom But people seem perfectly happy with the cheap earbuds that they have now, I said. Yes, this is probably true, he says....but given the choice, people will ALWAYS prefer better sound quality at comparable pricing. The bottleneck, in his opinion, is bigger media storage and broadband. Once we figure these things out for real, it will be a lot more practical to create truly hi rez portable players for unit costs pretty similar to what your garden variety iPod costs today. When one can get better sound out of one's iPod without compromising their available storage in any meaningful way, one will no longer be content (kind of like us now) with the nasty earbuds. Encouraging....though I'm not sure I buy it 100% Your thoughts??

I have noticed that my coworkers do always enjoy the better ear/head phones that I show them. They just don't want to be bothered with spending either a bunch of money on them, or trying to find them. So, I agree with what your friend says about people will always prefer better sound at a similar cost.
I think the average consumer is cheap and lazy. I think the key word in your friends comment is "given a choice". When a guy is standing at Circuit City, he has the choices that are in front of him. IF, one of those choices was a better sounding unit and the price was the same or minimally higher he would probably buy it. If the high rez choice was at the stereo shop down the road, it wouldn't be considered a choice by Joe Consumer.

I think money has been the driving force behind the crappy sound we are getting. It's cheaper to do a poor job, and it's faster. So they can get the product to market quicker and cheaper, yet still sell the product at the same price. Increase profits. Get MTV to go gagga over your new artist, and sell a million copies of cheaply made music.

 

[nikongod]

most of the present problems with music would not be cured by a "media format change" but will require a "recording industry attitude change" in the respect of overprocesed music.

compression is rellllly a big problem. music with no compression is soooo nice. the little arguments about cd vs vinyl vs consumer cassette tapoes, etc are much moot when the music is all a motonous beat an volume.

 

[steel102]

Quote:

Originally Posted by asmox In my experience - music has become background noise to many people. Who still sits down, kills the lights, shuts their eyes, and listens to an album the way they might sit down and watch a movie? I'm sure they're out there, but I have NEVER seen anyone even express interest in doing something like that - much less actually do it. The "bottleneck" is people who just don't give a damn, and so they'll take what they can get. IMO.

this is how i feel as well. for many people, it is unbelievable that someone can just sit there listening to music for entertainment, instead of watching tv or movies etc.

 

[NotoriousBIG_PJ]

Every recording seems to be mastered hot these days. It REALLY sucks...

Biggie.

 

[fierce_freak]

Yeah, there seems to be no end to "hot" recordings ;(

 

[YamiTenshi]

Do I think the future of audiophile quality recordings will get better? No, at least not any time soon. There were a lot of important points already made but I'll reiterate some of my thoughts.

First, the general public only listen to music as background. They don't close their eyes and really listen to music. Most people would rather turn on the TV and go brain dead for a few hours then to actually listen to a cd. Or how about the people that care their iPods around everywhere they go and listen to top 40s music, never questioning if there is any other music out there or if their earbuds are really "good enough." Or the people who turn on the radio while they're busy doing a dozen other chores and by the end of the day can only remember what the DJ said and what the commercials were but none of the music. Do these people really care about music?

Second, to me, better equipment is just a means to an end, not the actual end. Yes I do listen critically for the bottleneck in my system sometimes so I can improve it, but I see nothing wrong with trying to get the most out of my music. At the end of the day I sit in a dark room and just relax to my music not to the equipment.

Third, I see society moving more towards quanity then quality. If you've noticed with iPod commericals they don't even advertise the size of the hard drive, but instead how many songs you can put on it. No one advertises that their player has a new improved headphone out. If anything they show off the crappy SRS and WOW gimmicks. Downloading a song at lossless will take more time then a song at 192. For someone using stock earbud why waste the time, and you can't fit as many lossless files on your iPod as you can 192.

Maybe after all of this has passed we can get back to quality recordings, but I don't see that any time soon.

 

[Jim_T]

Well I'm certainly not going to defend the recording industry - I agree with all the points made about them. But it's the consumers (note I didn't say "music lovers") who keep supporting them, albeit in ever-decreasing numbers. If you were to offer two CDs with the same music on them, one mastered hot and one not, and had most people listen then choose, I think most would choose the louder one. Don't you?

 

[Wodgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim_T If you were to offer two CDs with the same music on them, one mastered hot and one not, and had most people listen then choose, I think most would choose the louder one. Don't you?

I think that's a recording industry myth. Consumers like punchy bass, and hot, squashed recordings have almost no punch. For the consumers out there who just want loud, they can turn the volume up.

The loudness race is just a case of mass lunacy in the recording industry. None of the reasons for it make any sense. They say it's for radio airplay, but all top 40 radio stations use compressors anyway. They say consumers want it, but that makes no sense. It's just a runaway fad, and too few people in the industry are willing to stand up and say the emperor has no clothes.

 

[Jim_T]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wodgy I think that's a recording industry myth. Consumers like punchy bass, and hot, squashed recordings have almost no punch. For the consumers out there who just want loud, they can turn the volume up. The loudness race is just a case of mass lunacy in the recording industry. None of the reasons for it make any sense. They say it's for radio airplay, but all top 40 radio stations use compressors anyway. They say consumers want it, but that makes no sense. It's just a runaway fad, and too few people in the industry are willing to stand up and say the emperor has no clothes.

But isn't it the case that people naturally perceive a louder source as being somehow better? That's the reasoning I've always heard for strict level-matching when comparing two sources. There must be some good reason (in the eyes of whom, I don't know) for the compression and loudness that's the norm today. It's been getting worse for years - isn't that a big long for a fad?

 

[YamiTenshi]

Unfortunately there are people who think louder is better. Again it's putting quanity over quality.

 

[Edwood]

The RIAA will hobble every new format with draconian DRM.

For a new format to succeed, it must be more convenient than what it's replacing.

Quality is always a secondary consideration by the mass consumer.

You'll see this in the upcoming Hi Def Video format war coming up.

-Ed

 

[Trance-Addict]

Quote:

Originally Posted by elrod-tom But people seem perfectly happy with the cheap earbuds that they have now, I said. Yes, this is probably true, he says....but given the choice, people will ALWAYS prefer better sound quality at comparable pricing.

What happens if one day hi-fi is so abundant and cheap that everyone has Grado's or something equivalent or better with dap's that produce that perfect sound everyone chases. What will the head-fiers do or spend there money on when everyone has the same gear? I guess probably modded cables and ear pads.

 

[Febs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by YamiTenshi Third, I see society moving more towards quanity then quality. If you've noticed with iPod commericals they don't even advertise the size of the hard drive, but instead how many songs you can put on it.

I think that the reason manufacturers advertise the number of songs that a player can hold is because that is a quantification of the storage capacity of a player that people can easily understand. Manufacturers can't assume that the average member of their target audience understands how many megabytes are in a gigabyte*, or how large an average --alt-preset standard is compared to a lossless file or a 128kbps CBR file. I don't think that you can assume that means that people don't care about quality.

[size=xx-small](*In fact, many Head-Fiers don't understand how many MBs are in a GB. As proof, look at the "Why does my 40GB player only have 37.6GB?" threads that are posted here from time to time.)[/size]

Take the analogous situation with respect to digital photography. Manufacturers routinely publish the number of pictures that a particular memory card can hold, because it is a measure that the general public can relate to. That doesn't mean that people want to take crappy pictures just so they can store more pictures on their card. People will buy a 6 megapixel camera instead of a 1 megapixel camera, and pay more for it, because they want a higher quality.

 

[YamiTenshi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Febs I think that the reason manufacturers advertise the number of songs that a player can hold is because that is a quantification of the storage capacity of a player that people can easily understand. Manufacturers can't assume that the average member of their target audience understands how many megabytes are in a gigabyte*, or how large an average --alt-preset standard is compared to a lossless file or a 128kbps CBR file. I don't think that you can assume that means that people don't care about quality. [size=xx-small](*In fact, many Head-Fiers don't understand how many MBs are in a GB. As proof, look at the "Why does my 40GB player only have 37.6GB?" threads that are posted here from time to time.)[/size] Take the analogous situation with respect to digital photography. Manufacturers routinely publish the number of pictures that a particular memory card can hold, because it is a measure that the general public can relate to. That doesn't mean that people want to take crappy pictures just so they can store more pictures on their card. People will buy a 6 megapixel camera instead of a 1 megapixel camera, and pay more for it, because they want a higher quality.

Yes, but this is also the dumbing down of society. I agree with you that just because someone doesn't know how many MBs are in a GBs doesn't mean they don't appreciate good music. But the way that manufactures are treating these people is to tell them what the standard file size they should have (which unfortunately is 128/192). I think there's a tendency to follow these numbers without questioning if the quality is really there, as long as you can fit 10,000 songs on your player. (And some advertisements actually say 128 = cd quality!

)

Slightly off topic, but since you mentioned photography. I understand that you can set the quality of the pictures you take on digital cameras, though I don't have one myself. I have used digital cameras from other people where they purposely set it to get the maximum number of pictures. They said that it all looked the same when they print it out anyway.

To me the pictures look grainy, but to them they just want as many pictures as possible without having to buy another SD card.

I really think people like us who want the quality over quantity are the minority. The general public can appreciate good quality and if everything else was equal they would prefer higher quality, but because things are not equal I think most people tend to prefer quantity.